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Japanese Olympic Champion Racks Up $5,000 Bill Playing Pokemon Go in Brazil (theverge.com) 113

Posted by msmash from the gotta-buy-a-roaming-plan dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A Japanese Olympics star has blamed Pokemon Go after being hit with a 500,000 yen (about $5,000) bill in roaming charges from his carrier. Artistic gymnast Kohei Uchimura, who won gold at the 2012 Games in London and is the reigning world champion, said he only downloaded the game after arriving in Sao Paulo to train for Rio, but quickly got hooked despite not having arranged a flat rate for data roaming. Uchimura "couldn't believe his eyes" when he saw the bill, according to the Kyodo news agency, with teammate Kenzo Shirai saying "He looked dead at the team meal that day." Even though Pokemon Go isn't particularly heavy on data and there were likely other culprits -- the game only officially came out in Brazil today, though Uchimura may have been playing the Japanese version -- roaming charges can rack up extremely quickly when you use your phone abroad for pretty much anything online.
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Japanese Olympic Champion Racks Up $5,000 Bill Playing Pokemon Go in Brazil More

Japanese Olympic Champion Racks Up $5,000 Bill Playing Pokemon Go in Brazil

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  • Roaming charges is a racket of tolls and taxes (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04, 2016 @10:23AM (#52644379)

    Despite this is the digital age of free information, ISP/Phone carriers still rape and pillage wholesale where they can. I'm not a fan of big government but this is one area they need SEVERE regulation. Those fuckers are the oil barons and railroad tycoons of this century.

    • Try Republic Wireless or Google Fi (basically only slightly different now.)

      • Re: Roaming charges is a racket of tolls and taxes (Score:5, Informative)

        by naughtynaughty ( 1154069 ) on Thursday August 04, 2016 @11:11AM (#52644803)

        Or T-Mobile, I travel outside the US > 50% of my time and appreciate my phone always working and always having data with the data free, though not high speed.

        • T-Mobile seems to have free data just about everywhere, though you'll be stuck at low speed (2G or 3G, not sure, especially with the discontinuation of 2G). Was pleasantly surprised to learn this.

          • I was in Japan last week with my T-mobile iPhone. Yes, it is throttled that it takes long time to load things like satellite image on your map, but it is perfectly fast enough to play Pokemon-Go and FaceTime voice call.
          • The low speed data is delivered over a 2G (EDGE), 3G (HSPA), or 4G (LTE) connection, depending on availability and phone compatibility. (The bands used in the US for LTE are different from the ones used outside the Western Hemisphere, so most US-model LTE phones can't make LTE connections in Europe or Asia.) They just throttle your data speed if you are on a high speed connection.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gfxguy ( 98788 )
          Plus 1 for T-Mobile.... my company gave us an extra day of per diem to cover international rates for our cell phones.... free money for me.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by bano ( 410 )

          I was recently told by a visiting European that the T-Mobile free international data is a feature only offered to T-Mobile US based customers. Though I did not do any checking to validate this.

      • Republic only offers international access via wifi. If I had access to wifi, I would just use the wifi.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      But this guy competes internationally, has he got an excuse for not knowing the costs of international data roaming? With the two telcos I've used, when I land in a new country, I get a text telling me the call, text and data charges there; if that isn't ubiquitous, it really should be. When I see that "Data costs £5 per MB" in some non-EU countries, that's a great incentive to check that I switched data roaming off.

      • There's a setting on every phone I've had to not use data when roaming. I just leave it turned on all the time. There's no knowing when you're going to pick up a network you don't expect on your cell phone. I live in Canada, and it's quite common to pick up US networks when I'm too close to the border and the coverage on the Canadian side is weak.

    • Actually, for phone service,a lot of those roaming charges are because of government taxes and tariffs on international voice calls. Why do you think companies have been clamoring to switch to VoIP for international operations?

      • Bulkshit. The charges are due to the peering fees the networks agree to charge each other. The tariffs are insignificant.

        • The charges are due to the peering fees the networks agree to charge each other.

          Try again. The roaming fees are pure profit for the networks. The fees are completely unjustified by costs. The networks figure that a small number of people will pay the vastly inflated charges while travelling. If T-Mobile can provide free data roaming in most countries, then the other carriers also can.

          • Try again.

            actually, try reading again. that's what i said.

            the networks agree to charge each other peering fees. those fees are passed on to their customers.

            for example (apropos to me right now): O2 has an agreement with AT&T to handle internet traffic from AT&T phones when connected to the O2 network. there's really no technical reason O2 needs to charge more to AT&T connections than it does to its own connections - it's just a different sim, after all. in order for this to work (from a business standpoin

            • Idiot.

              Of course there are peering agreements. However, you seem to think that those peering agreements specify data rates of the order of several dollars per megabyte and that's why people get charged several dollars per megabyte. This is simply not true.

              The networks do not pass on their own costs to customers, instead they charge a vastly inflated rate to their own customers who have the temerity to use roaming.

              What happens is that the peering agreements specify a charge rate which represents something nea

          • One reason that T-Mobile can provide data roaming is because they operate in many of the countries where they offer the roaming. Verizon and AT&T are US-based and have little international presence, so they have to buy roaming service from other companies. (Verizon Wireless was originally a joint venture with UK-based Vodafone; Verizon bought out Vodafone's share a few years ago.) Sprint is owned by a Japanese telecom company, Softbank; I don't think they have any European connections.

            • Your suggestion might hold water if:
              1. T-Mobile USA were a wholly-owned subsidiary of DT. It's not. DT is the largest shareholder in T-Mobile USA, but it only owns about 72% of the outstanding shares. This makes such agreements impossible.
              2. The free data roaming agreements were bilateral. I haven't seen any indication of this.
              3. The data roaming were limited to a T-Mobile network in the foreign countries. It's not.
              4. DT actually owned the T-Mobile subsidiaries in all countries. It doesn't, for example, in

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      The EU is regulating roaming down - it used to be exorbitant but now phone calls, text and data are charged at domestic rate plus a small tariff and from the middle of next year there should be no tariff at all.

      I don't see much reason Brazil to do for some random Japanese network although South America could collectively ban roaming charges if they wished for the same reasons as Europe - travel, trade, border towns etc.

    • They don't even need severe regulation, just a little common sense. If you get a credit card, you get a credit limit. There's a fixed maximum you can actually spend. Why is that not the case on cell phones? Why can't I call up my cell carrier and tell them "Hey guys, ya know what? If I ever rack up charges exceeding, say, 2x my normal bill in one month, I want you to cut me off immediately." Or, put another way, "I do NOT authorize charges over $x/month."

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Yawn (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04, 2016 @10:24AM (#52644401)

    "The story has a happy ending, though — after Uchimura called his carrier to explain, he was let off with a flat daily charge of around $30, which is enough to make him probably wish he'd just bought a Brazilian SIM card but you know, not $5,000."

    It's comical. This could have happened with Youtube, Candy Crush, etc. Is it noteworthy because a) it's the Olympics, b) it's Pokemon Go, c) it's a slow news day or d) all of the above?

  • just goes to show... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Type44Q ( 1233630 )
    Just goes to show you can be an Olympic champion and still be an abject moron... but to be fair, Japanese aren't exactly encouraged to think and function independently...

  • Just wait for auto drive cars to do the same even in boarder areas where you did not cross the boarder but picked up an tower on the other side.

    Now roaming fees are so high you can rack up really big bill before automated systems can kick in and cut it off.

  • "Guy travels to foreign country forgets to buy international roaming plan."

    What is the purpose of this story and is it really a technology issue? Rail against "the man" ? Stupid Pokemon Go user?

    Yawn.

    • Buying a local SIM card is actually a PITA because people can't reach you at your normal mobile number. You have to inform everybody. Many business people tolerate large roaming bills in order to stay connected to customers. This is news because normally when traveling you can avoid data roaming charges by using WiFi. Most of us turn off cellular data when traveling international. I actually turn my phone off and leave it off when traveling internationally. With exciting new applications like Pokemon G

      • Yeah - as the other guy said. Look into Google Voice. I use it (not internationally though). Wifi calling yes - but you can also add phone numbers for it to call - and maybe it can (for a smaller fee) redirect calls to your international SIM phone#.

        Somebody used to build a phone that had two SIMs in it. It could operate on a dual phone#. It was long ago so I can't remember who - but you had multiple phone# and could switch between them.

        Google Voice operates like a PBX - people call the virtual number a

        • I use Google Voice. Unfortunately sometimes I forget to use the Google Voice dialer so people end up with my mobile # on their inbound calling list and call it back. When traveling international, I do everything I can to minimize the cost but occasionally I get an email from our IT team that the bill was over $500.
  • I hate to say it, but roaming taxes are a tax on the stupid, or at least on people with pockets too deep to care, or a company account etc. It's pretty easy these days to either give your carrier a phone call before leaving, to arrange an international rate for your trip, or to buy a local sim card or throwaway phone while you are there. Or just turn off your data roaming and use wifi. It's not like ten years ago when people didn't understand data roaming. People should know these things, there are news art
    • Hell, whenever I roam, my carrier sends me an SMS saying 'hey, you're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Turn off your data or face the wrath of the roaming charge!'

      • Hell, whenever I roam, my carrier sends me an SMS saying 'hey, you're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Turn off your data or face the wrath of the roaming charge!'

        Usually, I get an SMS telling me that I have free (albeit slow) data roaming.

  • This is the kind of thing that is told to people traveling abroad. He may not have been listening. After all he was going to the Olympics! This is just one of many learning experiences that he will go through during life. The take away is "pay attention" and prepare for all contingencies. He is now a bit wiser for it.

  • It's his own dumb fault.

    Way to maintain the stereotype of the "dumb jock"...

    • Stereotypes exist for a reason. They are the top few traits that score above the mean for a histogram of traits for a given group. If a given group wants to change the stereotype then change the traits in enough of it's members and the problem will take care of itself. People bitching about stereotypes make me laugh since stereotypes aren't created, they are just observations.

    • Srsly?? One of the greatest artistic gymnasts in the world is not befitting the dumb jock stereotype...he's not a high school footballer with a C average.

      • He's a jock, Gymnatics is still a sport, and to be good, you need both talent and to put in a LOT of practice time

  • Beware International Travel (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jason Levine ( 196982 ) on Thursday August 04, 2016 @11:17AM (#52644859) Homepage

    A lot of people might travel internationally and just assume that their phone will serve them data at the same cost as in their home country. When we were going to go on a cruise to the Bahamas, we inquired about how much data would cost. Once we knew how much ($2 per MB), we made sure to put our phones in airplane mode for the duration of the trip, using them only to take photos that could be shared later via the ship's WiFi (which we had a set number of minutes access to) or when we returned to the US.

    • "A lot of people might travel internationally and just assume that their phone will serve them data at the same cost as in their home country."

      Ahh, yes... assumption - the mother of all fuckups. Why would you assume that? Other than being are a complete abject moron...

      • If you use Sprint or T-Mobile, that assumption is actually correct.

        Much to my surprise, a month before the date I had decided on for switching to T-Mobile, I discovered Sprint includes unlimited (3g) international data while out of the country. Staved off my switch, they now have to *really* fuck up to undo the goodwill generated with that.

      • Partly because people don't think about roaming charges anymore. Pretty much wherever you go in the US, you can use your phone without worrying about being charged extra. (The most you might worry about is not getting a signal.) Some people just don't think about phone data plans when they go overseas and wind up coming home to a huge bill.

        Another issue is that some countries are more expensive than others. The Bahamas was $2 per MB but if you went to Mexico, you could pay $2 a day to bring your usual c

  • Not Adding Up (Score:3)

    by MyLongNickName ( 822545 ) on Thursday August 04, 2016 @12:18PM (#52645415) Journal

    I have played the game pretty heavily while on vacation. In the 6 days I had to play, I left the thing on for 5-6 hours per day. In that time Pokemon go used 100 megs of data. What kind of plan was he on that cost so much?

    • A lot of international roaming is like 2 dollars a meg. Its highway robbery.

      • I'll take your word on the roaming fees, but it still seems like more than Pokemon Go could account for with 24x7 playing for a week without any wifi.

  • the game only officially came out in Brazil today, though Uchimura may have been playing the Japanese version

    This doesn't matter, since the servers blocked pokemon from spawning in Brazil before today. So what exactly was he doing two weeks ago when he used all this data?

    • you still get random spawns when you pop a lure or incense, actually, and you can mature eggs based on distance from GPS

  • Such a scam (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wwalker ( 159341 ) on Thursday August 04, 2016 @01:09PM (#52645817) Journal

    The whole mobile roaming is such a scam. I mean, with pretty much everything that you pay money for, you can always get a clearly define price *before* deciding on a purchase. And a lot of times (stores with a check-out) you can even say "it's too expensive, I don't want that". With roaming charges (both data and voice), you have to jump through hoops (i.e. call someone and wait on hold for XX minutes) to get the price, and often enough they cannot tell you because you don't always know your exact location beforehand. Why can you get that info from your phone? Right there and then, before making a call, or before incurring data charges. I'm sure it's technically possible, and if the info isn't yet sent to the phone every time to change roaming provider, I'm sure we can force it to happen via legislation. For once Congress can do some good.

    Also, it's easy to call someone a moron, but when you are under a lot of pressure because you are going to compete in the Olympics, I can totally see forgetting that I'm in a different country when checking my phone and deciding to catch some 'mons and losing track of time.

  • Nintendo will pick up the tab in addition to paying what they owe him for shilling the game.

  • Looks like it's the Japanese Olympians!

    (one of my research colleagues is a Japanese Brazilian, actually, it's kind of sad the current situation there)

  • If I were King of the World for a day, the second group of people I'd order summary executions for would be anyone that is upper mid-management or above in a cable or phone company. Fortunately for them and spammers/scammers/fraudsters/robocallers, I won't get the job of King.

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